black tape for a blue girl ‎– This Lush Garden Within

"Left, Unsaid" sets the scene - mysterious, slowly drifting music with piano & cello-like keyboards swelling over the ambient sounds of nocturnal insects. SAM ROSENTHAL sings & talks his words over the odd beauty while fanfares punctuate the air in celebration (of some ritual). "The Broken Glass" is a more composed thing with guitar sounds mixing with violin-like rhythm while the vocalists (OSCAR BERRERA, LUCIAN CASSELMAN & SAM ROSENTHAL) add the strange elements of beauteous mystery which makes so many of the releases on this label so desirable. "We Exist, Entwined" is one of their more odd experimental pieces, starting like something by POPUL VUH, it soon changes, becoming an Eastern, Arabian Night fantasy with a seemingly looped rhythm over which the vocalist layers his voice, creating a haunting piece of music which briefly breaks for an ambient interlude before kicking back into life - a very clever little composition indeed. In the second part the vocalist sings half-hidden words. It has a certain tension to it, an eager readiness to slice the air into silence like a simitar through the relately feeble material of human flesh, "Overwhelmed, Beneath Me" returns to a more dreamlike, gentle mood music which still has an edge to it. "This Lush Garden Within", the title track is a comparatively simple piece built mainly on acoustic guitar & voice, a heartfelt song from PADRAIC OGL. "The Christ In The Desert" is a gentle dreamsong, a journey through darkness & varous images, like sea washing against a pebble shore. A dark composition which seems to utilise.a myriad natural sounds as it's music, all moulded into one specific mood, a mood both dark & dread. "The Turbulence And The Torment" returns to a more musical area with gently rippling sequencer amidst which multiple layers of electronics are woven, more gentle than the most mellow New Ager, this drifts in a cataleptic dreamstate, roiling in tiny eddys as whispered voice gently breaks the delicate air, "The Flow Of Our Spirit" is a gentle, barely-tuned hymn of sadness & beauty, a pastoral glance into another human's soul. "Into The Garden" again uses a certain discrete drama, dark theme from some arcane religious ceremony with fanfares & chanting. It reminds me a lot of GRAEME REVELL's music on SPK's milestone "Zamia Lehmanni" album, doomy & gloomy yet full of rich colourful beauty. "Decomposed By The Fire Of The Firmament" heads even deeper, even darker, into the shadows of the human mind, a dramatic groundswell of elecltronics over which the vocalists agonise their words, reaching for human emotion through the ether. "Gravity's Angel" is apparently a cover version of a LAURIE ANDERSON piece - SUSAN JENNINGS singing over simple but dramatic music which creeps like nightmarish spiders. "On Broken Shells Of Crystal Dreams" opens to harmonised voices before becoming a heavily-weighted slow-dance, a theme from hidden caverns, a song of heartfelt loss. It moves along to an almost ambient, drifting instrumental theme. "Our Future Imagined" closes the album, chiming through muted sounds, it becomes another slow, reflective, timeless song with almost operatic leanings (held fast by it's obvious Avant Garde roots), it's another song from the land of dreams & fantasies, a theme from wherever childhood imagination emerges from.
BLACK TAPE FOR A BLUE GIRL are not easy to pigeon-hole or to describe, always ready to do something different it only to upset (or offset) what we have come to regard as their 'Sound'. Despite the beauty & mood they create, a BTFABG album is never an easy listen, but always rewarding to explore. If I were to compare them to anyone, it would be THIS MORTAL COIL, although they are musically fairly diverse. If you don't know their sound I'd recommend them as both ethereal & experimental.

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.